erotema

English

Noun

erotema (countable and uncountable, plural erotemas)

1. (rhetoric) The rhetorical use of questions, especially questions which strongly imply their own answer.
   • 1939, Peter MacNaughton Miller, The Rhetoric of Sidney's Arcadia, page 206:

     Since the simple question, though technically erotema, is scarcely a figure however, I leave it out of the discussion.

   • 1977, Joseph A. Leo Lemay, Essays in Early Virginia Literature Honoring Richard Beale Davis, page 173:

     Erotema probably occupies more space in Camm's writings than does any other single device.

   • 1995, Pynchon Notes - Issues 32-35, page 17:

     Here erotema is fused with the logical fallacy begging the question: for example , "Shall we let her pull the wool over our eyes?"

   • 2005, Brett Zimmerman, Edgar Allan Poe: Rhetoric and Style, page 211:

     The narrator's use of erotema would seem to be a frantic rhetorical attempt to encourage acceptance in his audience of the theory of perversity . Through erotema he is asking his auditors to think deductively (to move from the general to the specific) by saying something like this: "Look, everyone has succumbed to perverse impulse now and then, right?— so you'll believe me when I tell you that perversity overcame me too, on the occasion when I hanged my poor cat."

Derived terms

• erotematic